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Channel: Danny Choo

Shima Shima Village Nagano

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The small village Shima Shima [島々] in Nagano was once upon a time a place where mountain climbers would stop off for the night on their way to the Northern Alps - so much so that it was known as Shima Shima Juku[島々宿] (Shima Shima Inn).

Shima Shima was one of four villages that were grouped to form Azumi Village back in 1874.

Now that Route 158 passes by the village, there is little need to stop off so the village went from being a flourishing collection of inns to a residential area.

Wifey and I stumbled on the charming village on the way back to Tokyo from the Northen Alps which reminded us of our visit to Grindelwald.

The village is filled with traditional residential buildings surrounded by mountains and has its own ravine - a recommended visit if you are traveling along Route 158 to Kamikochi.

The village is not a tourist area and there was only one shop that sold climbing equipment (which was closed). Very few signs of humans which is ideal for pandemic travel.

If you do get a chance to visit, then set your map to the following location.


Desk Diary 20210517

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Has it really been 5 years since I wrote the last Desk Diary? Life at work and home has changed drastically - and so has my workspaces too. I'm still constantly on the look to optimize my workspace which involves experimenting with what I need - and looking at what I can do without. 

I've been living in this apartment for the past few years now. It's literally a stone's throw away from work - not including the elevator wait, it's a 30 second run from door to door ;-)

The apartment is small so I don't have a single room dedicated for a workspace. Instead, I use half of our bedroom.

My Desk used to face the window. While I would get a nice view, the glare from outside made it difficult to see what was going on the monitor. 

My desk is custom-built made from recycled ashiba - planks of wood that have been used as scaffolding on Japanese residential and retail construction sites. The legs are from an IKEA SKARSTA. I still use standing desks which has helped me manage my spinal hernia over the years. 

The SKARSTA is only available in white so I used iron paint to paint it black and make it look like...iron ;-) No primer needed but if you are going to adjust the height often then the paint will chip off. The nets below the table were stolen from an IKEA BEKANT at work which helps manage cabling - which is in need of tidying as you can see ;-)

My main machine is the Macbook Air M1 which I take to and from work. I previously had one Mac at work and one at home but the overhead in managing two computers was just not worth the hassle - even with Dropbox, settings for apps just don't sync nicely to another computer.

Speakers are second-hand Bose Computer MusicMonitor - all scratched up which matches the table. I plug the speakers into the monitor so that I can get the sound to switch between Windows and Mac.

My gaming PC is on the desk which keeps Mirai warm. The PC is compact enough for me to take it to the lounge where I have more space for VR. 

Manage to nab an NVIDIA 3080 - love the design.

The keyboard is the Keychron K3 although since I took the photo I switched to the Vinpok Taptek as I made too many mistakes on the Keychron - no fault of the Keychron - it's just the way I type I guess. Gaming mouse is the Aerox 3.

I'm not a fan of large ATX cases so I went for an ITX board - the Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO and the processor I chose was the Ryzen 5 3600 - decent for what I need.

The rest of my gaming rig specs are NVIDIA 3080 Founders Edition, MASTERAIR G100M RGB, Corsair Vengeance LPX 64 GB, Crucial P5 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD and Corsair SF600 -PLATINUM- 600W. The case is the open styled XTIA Xproto. I got the NZXT Kraken Z63 water cooler but felt it overkill for my needs so went for the mushroom MASTERAIR G100M RGB instead. Performance on Half-Life: Alyx is great on ultra settings.

If you think VR is cheesy, check out Half-Life: Alyx - it really sets the standard and shows us what's possible with VR. You should give it a whirl if you have the chance.

My VR headset is the Oculus Quest 2. I don't get decent quality with Air Link and the wire does not bother me that much. I use a vice to hang the headset and controllers from the table.

I'm still trying to figure out why I got so many wires below my table ;-)

I switched the monitor arm to the Kensington which has a small footprint. 

My current Steam library.

Cuties Tomorrow and Monday Smart Doll.

Smart Doll Plus Valiant.

The PC is small so can be lugged to the lounge area where I dabble in gaming and VR.

The keyboard I use in the lounge when PC gaming is the Corsair K83 Wireless Entertainment Keyboard - convenient as I can type and control the cursor - but I personally don't have a great experience with the touchpad - the cursor seems to jerk all over the place. But I only use the keyboard for logging in and occasional searching. For games, I use the Xbox Core Controller.

Smart Doll's are like cats - they like to sit on warm appliances.

The view.

About Danny Choo

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My previous profile page started to look really cheesy so I thought I would do a quick n dirty copy/paste from the What Is Smart Doll page for now. I wiill spruce this page up a bit in the future.

Born and raised in London England (Hackney to be precise), I discovered Japanese culture through gaming machines such as the Sega Megadrive and anime such as Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

I wanted to learn more about Japan but in order to do so, I needed to learn Japanese because my only gateway to Japan back then was a couple of Japanese bookshops in London - no internets back in the late 80's ;-)

I started to self-study Japanese by reading manga (Japanese comics) and decided to get a job at a Japanese restaurant called Benihana so that I could practice my Japanese while earning a few quid at the same time. At Benihana I was washing, serving, and occasionally breaking dishes. I got to improve my Japanese during work and also met my wife there.

I decided to finish off my Japanese language learning at London University which lead to a job at Japan Airlines in London. I eventually made it to the land of the rising sun where I worked in IT for several years doing marketing for the scientific journal Nature, Website Manager at Amazon and a Product Manager at Microsoft.

ABOUT MIRAI INC

After saying sayonara to a steady paycheque in 2007, I left corporate life to startup a company with wifey called Mirai Inc. We started off web consulting for the likes of Disney Japan and Columbia Music and before we knew it, we had created a brand called Culture Japan which consisted of a blog, TV show and character goods of our mascot character Mirai Suenaga.

The Japanese government recognized our work in sharing Japanese culture and appointed me as an advisor of various "Cool Japan" committees.

By 2012, I started development on a fashion doll which was to be modeled after our mascot Mirai and by June 2014 she was ready for launch. On 2013 April Fools Day, I announced that Mirai was going to be a terminator robot running on Android that could do your homework - this is the reason why I called the product "Smart Doll." News on the project went viral which was great but also meant that it became difficult to change the name without causing confusion - and so the name stuck.

Because of my April Fool lies, I always get asked "what's so smart about Smart Doll?"
My response is the video below ;-)

Tokyo Cityscape

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Tokyo Cityscape photos taken as I go about my day. Many taken from our apartment and on the way out of Tokyo for a weekend break. Photos taken on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

UBARA UTOPIA

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Located in Katsuura Chiba is Ubara Utopia (鵜原理想郷) - a little-known coastal hiking area surrounded by lush vegetation. It takes about 2 hours by car from central Tokyo but is well worth the trip - the scenery is lovely. We took Dimension with us - luckily, she had her little baseball cap to keep her hair at bay as it was very very windy ;-)

We shifted our workweek to avoid taking Saturday and Sunday off - traveling anywhere in Japan on a Saturday is a nightmare due to traffic.

We take Sunday and Monday off when we do a five-day workweek - and take the Tuesday off when we do a four-day workweek.

Traveling on a Sunday is not as bad as Saturday, and our shifted workweek means the team can spend more time playing rather than sitting in traffic.

We can't work remotely right now as our products currently involve handcrafting by humans - but when VR technology catches up, I'm sure we would be able to work from anywhere ;-)

What is it like when you travel out of your neighborhood? Do you have to endure traffic jams, or is it relatively smooth cruising?



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